Rising Star Agenda

After sifting through the many questions people had about how to succeed as a new consultant, I've narrowed down the list of topics to the following:

How to Strategically Choose Which Projects to Work On

How to Establish a "Trusted Advisor" Relationship with a Client

How to Differentiate Yourself from Other Very Smart & Hard Working Colleagues

Which Books to Read Before Your Start Date, So You Can Hit the Ground Running

How to Communicate with and "Manage Up" to Partners & Project Managers

How to Manage Your Time to Do the Things That Differentiate You, While Still Getting Your Work Done

The Best Way to Networking Inside Your Firm and Build Your Personal Brand

The 7 Most Common Mistakes New Consultants Make

How to Communicate Your Point of View, When You're the "New Guy/Gal"

Please feel free to comment below on what you think of this agenda and if you want to suggest any changes.

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Ways to find a select the jobs you want to work post-consulting?
How to build strong industry relationship for post-consulting career move?
How to be on the priority list of headhunters?
How to maintain work-life balance?

My questions might be addressed when you answer your original set of questions. But just wanted to flag it to your attention.

I hope you’ll share your thoughts about how to strategize for moving along the career path in your firm in point 1, e.g. tips for finding areas that you can help grow within the firm, when to stop digging around and focus, things like that.

If I can suggest something which could be added to this list :
– how to manage well a first failure or a first bad evaluation ?
– more superficially speaking, are there any specific “dress code”? I’m talking about brands of clothes, jewelry…

1) How to proactively seek out feedback mid-case. My first case I had a rude awakening, because my consultant didn’t bother to give me feedback during the case, but I didn’t ask for it, either. I then turned it around and have been doing well ever since.

2) How to determine the balance between figuring out things on your own, and going to clarify direction. So many times I’ve beat myself up, only to find that what I was doing wasn’t that important, or that I could’ve gotten re-routed if I had gone to consultant earlier. But you also can’t go to them every 5 seconds…so where is the balance?

3) A prioritized list of things to focus on. There’s so much to learn at once, what should you focus on first? My suggestion is to focus on the “concrete” things first (i.e., research resources that are available, learning your firm’s PPT / Excel standards cold, your firm’s QC checklist, etc)

Besides it would be great if you could also add few dos and don’ts on making consulting power point presentations. Since I am in my final year of MBA and will be joining Deloitte in strategy and operation division in a few months time, I am very much interested in knowing how to present case findings and recommendations to the client in a comprehensive yet graphically appealing way.

– Must-know stat and excel tools
– How to sell your skills to the client – Some of the firms have the culture of letting the client interview the candidate, what is the right way to go about it.
– How to make a good first impression on your team?

Your articles have been of immense help. I look forward to this one, since I just joined and these pointers would be of great help.

1. How to ensure that you get usefull feedback – from clients, peers, bosses
2. How to structure projects that proper balance of client engagement / support is achieved
3. Managing client expectations in a way, that you are able to exceed them.
4. How to lower client expectations in non-offensive way, when expectations are unreasonable.
5. Managing client relationship

Someone once suggested to me that I should become the encyclopedia of the firm that I work for. For instance, I should know at least the major studies/engagements my firm has done, major leaders in the firm, the past good and bad major events in the firm, etc. In your opinion, what would be the best ways to do this research?

The list looks good. In addition to the aspects listed above, I would like to suggest the following:-

1. How to deal with irrational and uncooperative clients when seeking data, buy-in or implementation of certain initiatives

2. What are the varying degree of skills required based on the type of case (segmented by function) – strategy, operations and organizational transformation are three most common functional cases that consultants typically work on – For e.g. In a strategy engagement, greater emphasis is on XYZ skills (quantify if possible) vs. In an operations engagement it is ABC skills

This might have been mentioned already, but to enhance the doubt:
How to COOPERATE well on a team while COMPETING well as an individual for that limited 10% or 5% “ask to stay”…you know, a little touchy issues like whether to share certain info or not…